No, it is not the start of the school year. It is not the start of a New Year. It isn’t even a Monday, but the beauty of home educating is that you can completely customize the whole experience to your child, including when you begin!

Over the last few months, it had become increasingly clear to me that my daughter (age 3) was ready to begin preschool officially, after about a year and a half of very relaxed and unstructured learning. Before starting this first year of preschool, she had already learned: her colors, shapes, animals & their sounds, all of her uppercase letters, all of her letter sounds, most of her lowercase letters, counting to thirteen orally, 0-10 number recognition, basic A/B and A/BB pattern recognition, and working on spelling her name and cutting with scissors. I truly believe this is very much due to her personality; she loves to learn and retains information so well at this age!

She knew more than was necessary to begin the core of our preschool curriculum, based on their placement test. Between that and her eager, excited response to the simple school lessons I had pieced together before our official start, (along with with her baby brother finally getting into a solid nap routine), I knew she was ready to begin this school year. We both were.

As a quick background, I have done lots of research on homeschool philosophies and curricula, and this research has been invaluable as we have started this school year with our daughter! I also taught preschool for a handful of years, and spent time volunteering with a variety of age ranges in church for a decade before my daughter was born, so I have gained some experience in teaching, which I have drawn from often over the last year and a half or so with her.

My goal is to have 3-4 school days per week, but I’m open to more or less depending upon her interest level and any sicknesses, trips, etc. that we have going on as a family. As she gets older, I will become more structured in our schedule and school year routine, but for now it works to sort of fly by the seat of our pants. I also hope to plan a few local field trips for her over the summer.

Without further delay, here is the lineup for our first year of home education: preschool!

The Good and the Beautiful Preschool Course

This is the core of our curriculum this year and we are both loving it so much! We finished Lesson 9 today and I am so proud of how my girl has worked her way through these lessons and has practiced her pencil grip, cutting practice, uppercase and lowercase letters, phonics, and more. I am really loving the open-and-go style of this course and I would absolutely recommend it for other homeschooling mamas of preschoolers. It really is beautiful, and it’s so easy to teach! The lessons are gently challenging, fun, and engaging, yet they are short — which helps with her attention span at this age.

She also loves the file folder games (we have only done “Mouse House” so far), as well as coloring or decorating the practice sheets!

Mathematical Reasoning Workbook – Beginner 1

This was recommended highly by my friend, Hannah, who blogs over at Just Bee Blog. I decided to take the plunge and try it out, and I have been blown away by how well this workbook is designed. It is the perfect fit for my preschooler’s age, and again, her attention span. The book isn’t broken down into lessons, so you can take it as slowly (or quickly) as you desire. Some days, we do one or two pages. Other days, we might breeze through five! The scope and sequence makes so much sense and I am impressed with how well she grasps the concepts and enjoys the activities. As someone who really struggled with math, I want my children to have a solid understanding and foundation in mathematics, and so far, so good.

Bible

We had been using the Jesus Storybook Bible, and while I loved the illustrations and the fact that every lesson pointed to Jesus, each lesson was a little lengthy and would lose her attention before I finished the whole of it. I decided to try out The Family-Time Bible in Pictures, which was recommended by many of the homeschooling mamas I follow online, and it has been such a great fit for our Bible time each day. The lessons are short, with realistic illustrations and comprehension questions at the end of each one. Someday, I hope to go back to The Jesus Storybook Bible, but The Family-Time Bible has been perfect for her age and stage right now!

Catechism isn’t something I grew up doing, so the concept was new to me, but I have loved implementing the Truth and Grace Memory Book! We have been working on this for several months, but as we have gotten more consistent with it in the last few weeks, I can see her grasping the answers more quickly. It warms my heart to know that she is learning truth at such a young age.

ABC Scripture Memorization Cards — These cards also came highly recommended, and I can totally see why. They are such good quality, they’re beautifully designed, and they’re a god size so as not to be easily lost or damaged. This is another resource we have been using for quite some time and I have been so blessed by the fruit of working to hide God’s Word in her heart.

I grew up singing hymns in church — with this Sing to the Lord Hymnal, to be exact! Back before screens and projectors, we sang right out of the book. So many of these hymns bring me back to my beautiful childhood, and I yearned for that same experience for my own kids. Along with this hymnal, we love our Musical Shaker Eggs to keep time to the music and to give little, fidgety hands the gift of movement (which helps both teacher and student)! We also love these shaker eggs for a bit of our calendar time.

Calendar Time

We aim to start with a prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and then move on to our Magnetic Calendar. We discuss the day of the week, month of the year, the weather for that day, and so on, working our way through each category on the calendar. We sing “Today Is” (to the tune of “Are You Sleeping?”) and a Days of the Week song (to the tune of “Oh My Darlin’”), both using our shaker eggs. I require her to try her best when singing each song, but of course she is still learning so I don’t expect perfection!

I also have a very simple 2024 Wall Calendar that I refer to just to get her familiar with the layout, and also to count down to anything exciting we have coming up.

Finally, we have a small chalkboard and this World Map Tapestry that we use on occasion. As she gets older, I’m sure we’ll utilize the chalk board more AND refer to a more accurate map.

This concludes our calendar time!

Morning Basket

If you’re not familiar with what a morning basket is, I’ll refer you to this video by my friend, Hannah, as well as this podcast episode by Jami Balmet with Finding Joy in Your Home for more information. Basically, the idea is to pull a few resources out each day and rotate through them over the course of a week. This way, you don’t have to get to every single resource each day, but can be sure you’re hitting them all routinely.

These are our current Morning Basket resources:

Poetry: Sing a Song of Seasons Book — This is such a beautiful, quality book! We checked it out from our local library before purchasing (I aim to do this with any recommended books). We do try to read the daily poem out of this book each day.

Logic: Opposite Flash Cards — This isn’t the exact set we have but they’re very similar. I love working through these with my little student and she really enjoys the pictures!

Geography: Hello Kitty, U.S.A. Book — Y’all, humor me. This is not the most academically challenging book out there, but I remember having this book when I was a little girl and it truly did make me aware of places and monuments in the world that I wasn’t aware of before! It piqued my interest in a way that no textbook ever had before. So, I decided to get this for her, more for fun and nostalgia than anything. She really enjoys it and we love looking at the map of the U.S. in the middle of the book and pointing out different states where various family members live. We also have a Wooden Melissa and Doug United States of America Puzzle that we pull out from time to time (it’s not in our morning basket), so she’s getting familiar with geography from a few different resources!

Science: Indescribable for Little Ones Book by Louie Giglio — this is the neatest book! We checked out his devotional by the same name for older kids from the library, but it was a little over her head. This board book for younger kids is perfect! She loves the fun facts and interactive wheel that turns and pages that slide in and out. (Before this book, we were going through a few Paper Pie books on space and stars, and she loved that, too.)

Handwriting: The Good and the Beautiful – Doodles and Pre-Writing for Littles Part 1 — We are loving this little workbook! Because the Preschool Course Book has some handwriting practice built in, I don’t feel the need to use the handwriting book every day, but I do shoot for twice a week. As she grows, this will move to every day work, but this routine works for us right now.

Health: God Made All of Me Book — Honestly, I hate that we live in a world where we have to be this vigilant as parents to keep our children safe. Yet, I want my children to be equipped with the knowledge, awareness, and vocabulary (in an age-appropriate manner) to be able to understand what is and is not okay with regards to touch from others. I want them to understand that they have autonomy and that their bodies are to be protected, respected, and that no one has the right to their bodies but them. This book handles the subject with gentleness and truth, and I am thankful for such a resource to handle this topic for young children.

Read-Aloud: Little House Chapter Book: School Days — We have done a variety of read-alouds over the last six months or so. We’ve read several books in the Sophie Mouse series, the first book in the Kirsten American Girl series, and now this sweet Little House on the Prairie book. I read based on her interest level and attention span and done put pressure on her to stay still as long as she’s listening while I read.

Finally, a few school supplies we have found useful are your basic colored pencils, jumbo and regular-sized crayons, My First Ticonderoga Pencils, glue sticks, and a pair of safety scissors (we started with these and have since moved on to a pair like these).

That’s everything we use on a daily and weekly basis for homeschooling!

We have a variety of toys and books that are geared towards learning various academic subjects, such as the USA puzzle I mentioned earlier. If there is any interest on your part as the reader, let me know and I would be happy to compile those various resources into a separate blog post.

I hope this blog post was informative and encouraging for you as you research and seek to build your preschool curriculum for your own child or student! Which resources caught your eye? Have you used any of them before? I would love to hear about your home education journey in the comments below!

Note: I am not affiliated with any of the companies or resources mentioned in this post and do not currently make commissions off any products or resources.